[Hitch]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Perhaps. And I found your post educational. But my thought was that rights disappearance typically comes after the book reverts to the author.

That may well be. I can't guesstimate as to when/how rights disappear; I think it would take a pretty massive effort simply to estimate that accurately, as opposed to guesstimation or analysis-based-on-agenda. (That's not in any way directed at you; I've just found that many of the "sources" of things asserted as facts in this and other copyright discussions turn out to be mere opinions asserted by other people at some point in history.)

And even the language of the one sentence in the Google article from 2009 is wishy-washy, as in "specialists say" (none identified) and "some major libraries," not identified. That doesn't mean the author is incorrect; Helft may have simply edited the article down, given the attention-span of today's readers, but I'd feel happier if he'd provided the background material/research/names, via links, etc., so I could his source materials myself.

This:

A conservative estimate of the number of orphan books as a percentage of incopyright books across Europe puts the number at 3 million orphan books (13 % of the total number of in-copyright books). The older the books the higher the percentage of orphan works.

Seems like a pretty reasonable number. Given what happens with families, and WWII, I'm surprised that this number isn't higher. How many authors died without issue during WWII? And conflicts since then, like the Balkans? Surely, many. How many records were destroyed? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands, bombed, burned, or simply lost?

I'm not sure we can compare a copyright period which includes WWII (and to a lesser extent, WWI, vis-a-vis records destroyed) as a decent exemplar of what we can reasonably expect to happen in our future, if for no other reason than data is backed up, backed up, copied, backed up some more, copied as it bounces through servers enroute to nightly backups...see what I mean?

And the likelihood that clearance for any image material is going to be far, far more difficult seems reasonable. Photos? Lord, how many people here have thrown out thousands of family photos, when relatives have passed away, of all sorts? I know I have.

The costs of clearing the material simply means nothing more than: you have to wait. I know that sounds rude, but seriously, folks, you'd have to wait if it wasn't orphaned, wouldn't you? If it wasn't orphaned, maybe the author would digitize it, maybe he wouldn't; maybe he would and put a $25 price tag on it. Being orphaned or not is not actually relevant to whether or not the material is now cheaply or freely available. I have had phone conversations with quite a few authors who simply CHOOSE not to make their books available digitally, because they are afraid that the moment they do, piracy will be rampant. The reason doesn't matter: it's his choice.

So, while the whole "orphaned works" thing sounds very compelling, as a reason to suddenly switch gears, it's only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand. For all one knows, Bob Jones' granddaughter will track down the book, the rights, and digitize the book. For the first person who pooh-poohs this, I have done any number of reclaimed books through our company, so it's not as unrealistic as it sounds. I'd be interested to know what the actual numbers are for US books, as obviously, we didn't have the same type of disruption during WWII--to see how much of a factor that is.

High costs mean no eBook.

Yes, or the author hates digital books, or is too cheap to do it, or just isn't interested. It's not like changing copyright laws will somehow force people to make material one wants instantly available, cheap and downloadable anyway. This is a bit of misdirection, like the "corporations are sucking the lifeblood out of lost works" discussion, when so many books from the 20th century aren't in the hands of corporations, they're in the legal hands of the author's families, even if those heirs are dead.

I don't think that justifies the more extreme proposals. But confusion over rights certainly is a good argument again ever again lengthening copyright, and suggests need for countries with the longest copyright lengths to reduce them.

I think some type of reasonable argument for the reclamation of "lost works" is viable. The EU, which already exerts enormous control over the lives of its citizenry, could fairly easily just say, "step up now, here's our list of what we think is abandoned, if this is your Grandad, say so now or forever hold your peace," and then allow the works to be digitized by PG or whomever. {shrug}. I think preservation is a reasonable argument vis-a-vis abandoned works, and if someone hasn't made a peep about an abandoned work in 20 years, well...that's a reasonable time period for some heir to step up. It's likely that their line died out, or Cousin Janie from Australia is never going to know that Great Uncle Nicholas in Wales left her the rights to his book in his will in 1956. And, if Great Uncle Nicholas is actually famous, Cousin Janie probably already knows she's related, and if she sees a list, she might step up. And, yes: money will have to be spent to clear those copyrights, but none of us can just run around ripping off people's (rights/licenses/whatever) without making some reasonable effort to ensure that that isn't what we're doing.

Frankly, given the Google settlement, many "lost works" will be available for view at libraries, and the Rights Registry may clear up a ton of this. Patently (pun intended) Google is likely already doing the same thing in Europe. If the EU were smart (sigh), they'd let them. I mean, wouldn't a Rights Registry be the obvious first step? Assuming arguendo it doesn't already exist?

So, as I have already, at extraordinarily great length, said, let's make sure we know what we're talking about when we talk about copyright. The orphaned books problem isn't directly related to length of copyright; it's related to dead people, massive wars, massive destruction in an age of paper, no centralized registry, and the like. Even if those orphaned books weren't--even if heirs existed--it wouldn't necessarily make the works available in a format that would make the "ebooks-only" folks on this thread happy. In that context, they ought to positively adore Google for making millions of purportedly orphaned books now available through libraries and other sources.

If folks want "missing or abandoned or lost" works to be made available, digitally, then something has to occur--either zillions of donors (time) at PG have to step up, or someone like Google bears the burden of the costs. We all know what the volunteer pool at DP looks like. Money doesn't grow on trees, and to clear books will take money and time. If Goog wants to do clearances, and then be recompensed via a percentage of fees from usages, I think that makes sense, for the period of the original work's remaining copyright. After that time, it should be donated to PG or some equivalent location or simply free from Goog, or with some small (small!) additional time allowed to recover the initial costs of scanning, digitizing, etc.

Or, we all pitch in and start another "arm" of PG--we take on the massive task of clearances, volunteer-wise, and that's how it happens. We'll need donor lawyers, etc. Clerical workers to send out snail mails and emails. Then, and only then, would we be in a position to make those abandoned works "free" for people to access at this other arm of PG. Unless volunteers do all that work--or, like so many things in Europe, the government picks up the tab (13 million books?). But Europe seems to be saying, it's too expensive, and from what I read in that report (thanks for the link--fascinating), it is.

So: volunteers recognized by the various governments as a licensed body, or a corporation. That's about it. There's not going to be some magical free-for-all in the offing; it's simply too complicated. Too many wars, too many deaths, too many records destroyed...it's unfortunate, but that is the situation.

I do not believe that any intelligent discussion about copyright, in general, should be sidetracked by a discussion about orphaned works, because we all know that the 20th Century is a particularly bad starting place, with two World Wars and any number of smaller conflagrations muddying the pool. We didn't have computers, we didn't have the Net, we didn't have databases as we now do. Let's focus on the actual issues at hand: how long should a copyright, for its creator, last?

(And I'm done on this for a few days. This is freaking exhausting.)

Hitch